Assessment task details and instructions
OmegaCo is a medium-sized company that produces high-quality handmade fruit juice for customers in their own country. Most of these customers are small retailers and cafes that have used OmegaCo for a number of years, normally placing orders by telephone and paying by cash on delivery. There is little visibility of future orders, which means that the lead time for delivery can be over two weeks, and this means that some orders are cancelled at short notice due to changes in customer demand. In addition, OmegaCo has seen the market for their products reduced by nearly 20% over the last year, as consumers react to the increasing rate of inflation and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, OmegaCo relies on a small number of local suppliers for the materials (various fruits, sugar, glass bottles etc) they require and struggles to maintain effective relationships due to their difficulty in managing the supply and demand of their own products.
As OmegaCo has a strong brand image, the company has recently been bought by ZetaCo, which is a large organisation as they can see future opportunities in competing in global, more price-sensitive markets. This will require a change in strategy to one that focuses on the efficiency of production and the development of stronger and more professional customer and supplier relationships. A new focus will be needed to improve OmegaCo’s manufacturing, marketing, and supply chain capabilities and capacity. ZetaCo is prepared to invest significantly in making these changes, particularly through digital transformation, as their initial market research shows that there is a sizeable market for quality products, but costs need to be managed effectively and efficiently.
Your task
You are a technical consultant and have been sent by ZetaCo to review OmegaCo’s operations and information management processes and ways of working. This review takes the form of a report that includes the different tasks shown below with mark weightings against each one.
- Develop a SWOT analysis of the current situation at OmegaCo (10 Points).
- Based on your SWOT analysis, discuss how a more effective and efficient management of capacity, quality and both suppliers and customers could help ZetaCo meet its new performance objectives (40 Points).
- Select one of the process areas from part 2 (e.g. capacity, quality, supplier or customer management) and, using Business Process Model (BPM) techniques, develop and present two BPM models that show how these could be improved by capturing the existing and the proposed business processes (20 Points).
- Conduct research into a suitable Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution and develop an evaluation table, which shows a set of evaluation characteristics and the analysis of two commercial/off-the-shelf products and two Open Source Software alternatives (20 Points).
- Select one Industry 4.0 technology and discuss the benefits of implementing this into OmegaCo (10 Points).
Additional instructions
- Follow a report format, with a title and contents page, Executive Summary (that gives a brief and complete summary of your paper for an executive to read), brief introduction, individual sections and sub-sections that address the assignment brief tasks, page numbers, brief conclusions and appendix section (if used). If you are uncertain about how to present and structure a report then please refer to the Induction module and/or ask your tutor.
- Use diagrams, illustrations, tables, graphics etc. wherever these are helpful. If you do use these, please do not put them in the appendices if they are part of your discussion. Appendices are the appropriate places to put supporting material, however, remember if the reader is satisfied with the main points of your discussion; the supporting information within the appendices may not even be reviewed.
- Try to use theory explicitly at all stages, but do not spend too much time describing a theory. While you must be explicit about the theories, models, techniques etc. that you use, you can assume that the reader is familiar with them. What the reader requires is evidence of your ability to understand and apply the theory and learn from it in order to support the development of your findings and/or ideas.
- You must cite all sources on which you have relied, for example, textbooks, journal articles, web pages etc. using the Harvard Bibliographic referencing system.
- All submissions should be word-processed (letter size 12, times new roman, 1.5 space) and fully referenced.
- The word count for each task of the assignment brief should be based on the points weightings for each one.
- Word count – The maximum word count is 3000 words (+/- 10%). Your word count is from the introduction to the conclusion sections. Therefore, it does not include a title page, contents page, Executive Summary, reference section, appendices etc.
